12 Traits of a Seriously Creative Graphic Designer

1. Highly Motivated

Creative graphic designers are motivated by the task at hand rather than by material rewards. They find motivation in the challenge that a task presents rather than allowing the material benefits to dictate what they do.

2. Very Imaginative

They stand out from the crowd. While others follow the latest trends and find inspiration in other people’s work, the creative graphic designers find inspiration in everyday things and themselves.

3. Brutally Honest

Self criticism is a quality many people fail to find a balance in. They either end up being too critical of themselves or become over confident about being the best. Being brutally honest with oneself requires asking the right questions throughout thecreative design process. This is one of the leading traits of successful designers.

4. Truly Passionate

Passion tends to be the main driving force behind creativity. You have to love what you do in order to do it well. Unless you are passionate about what you do, you will not be able to completely focus on the task at hand and soon get tired of it.

5. Adore Challenges

Creative graphic designers do not shy away from challenges. They let their curiosity get the best of them, allowing them to ask questions and discover things most of us overlook. This curiosity gets them intrigued by challenges and they are able to tackle them head on.

6. Manage Time

Time management can become a challenge for many graphic designers who take on multiple projects and fail to deliver on time, leading to a lack in creativity. A good graphic designer would assess his/her current workload and is realistic in his approach towards work so every project s/he takes can be given its due time.

7. Find a Balance

Creative designers know how to strike a balance between being play and organized. They know how to be fun enough to experiment with various concepts and serious enough to implement them professionally. They combine the carefree fantasy with the right amount of realty based perspective.

8. Good Communicator

Being a good communicator plays a major role in the success of any designer. Prompt interaction with the client and keeping them in the loop regarding the developments and new ideas is critical to a project’s success. Doing so will help strengthen your designer-client relationship.

9. Professional Attitude

Good graphic designers know that there is a fine line between being confident and being arrogant. They don’t let their confidence get the best of them and are open to suggestions and ideas given by the client.

10. Can Take Criticism

Criticism is just another person’s opinion. Learn to take it positively as it will help you grow and understand things better. Successful graphic designers know how to accept criticism and understand that it is part of the learning process, not to be taken personally.

11. Keep Learning

Designing is a lifelong process. It is not something you can learn in a few months or a couple of years. As the graphic design industry continues to evolve, only the ones who keep up with the developments can stay ahead in the game. The minute you stop learning is the minute you sign yourself up for failure.

12. Push their Limits

Pushing your boundaries, thinking outside the box and allowing yourself to experiment is all part of the learning experience as a creative graphic designer.

All these traits are part of a successful graphic designer’s personality and play an imperative role in transforming an individual into a designer extraordinaire. Can you think of any other trait a winning graphic designer might have? Be sure to drop in a line. We love to know your opinion!

Top 10 Qualities of a Great Graphic Designer

Graphic designers are responsible for some of the most famous images of American consumerism. Everything from corporate logos to cereal boxes have their images created by designers. Some of the qualities the greatest graphic designers share include:

1. Artistic Ability: A great graphic designer must be talented and have a variety of artistic skills and ability.
2. Client Oriented: A great graphic designer is able to work easily with clients to ensure that designs meet specifications.
3. Communication: A great graphic designer is able to effectively communicate with clients and other members of the design team to ensure they are on track with deadlines and other goals.
4. Creativity: A great graphic designer is very creative and can come up with new and exciting ideas for designs.
5. Knows Audience: A great graphic designer understands that different audiences respond to different images and can integrate this understanding into their designs.
6. Manages Priorities: A great graphic designer is able to work within boundaries of deadlines and changing priorities and can effectively manage a workload to meet deadlines and satisfy clients.
7. Open to Change: A great graphic designer hears all criticism with an open mind and is willing to change designs based on the needs or wants of a client or opinions of members of the design team.
8. Strategy: A great graphic designer understands how strategy plays a part inMARKETING and advertising, and is able to develop strategic ideas and work within the scope of a client's strategic plan to execute top notch designs.
9. Teamwork: A great graphic designer works well as part of a team and recognizes that all team members must work well together and communicate openly to get a project completed.
10. Technology: A great graphic designer is well-versed in a plethora of desktop publishing software and is able to quickly learn new programs and incorporate them into his or her work.

BETTER DESIGN BY BRUSHING UP ON YOUR TECHNIQUES

I often fall into the trap where I limit the scope of my design capabilities by what techniques I have learned for my design tools (in this case photoshop, and illustrator.) You may not realize it, (and I often do not either) but the techniques that you don’t know actually hinder your overall design capabilities.

Even if you have been through graphic design school or experienced in fine arts, you will still suffer from a narrow design capability if you don’t work to learn more about these tools. This is because there are techniques youcould use but don’t even realize are an option while creating a new piece of work.

Photoshopers vs Designers

I see two different skills related to this subject, “Photoshopers” and “Designers.” I used to be very specific about calling myself a “designer” over a “photoshop guru.” The reason being that photoshop gurus tend to be amazing at altering photos, or developing incredible works of digital art in photoshop (sometimes making the surreal look real.) Where design requires functionality, usability, balance, and finesse. These are two different and specific skills, however it pays greatly to have both.

Getting to my point

When you are working with a design, even if you have done sketches, thumbnails, etc… chances are you are not even considering some great design accents because you simply don’t know how to do them. Maybe you don’t even realize that they exist as a possibility. If you were to know about them, in the right moment you would realize said technique would be worth trying and it would raise the quality of your work.

You may be looking to create a specific look, feel, or develop a specific mood. Naturally you will be thinking in terms of “what can I do to achieve this goal?” However “what can I do?” is actually “what can I do to achieve this goal that I know how to do?”

This is why it pays to take time to continually expand your skills and capabilities with your tools so that you have a wide range of available technique and have more to select from. Eventually you will have thousands of techniques and capabilities to create a wide range of moods/impacts/feelings/etc, and won’t be limited to the basic techniques you have used in a hundred of your old designs.

Long story short, you should have the skills and capabilities of a photoshoper with the design fundamentals of a designer.

Some Examples

You can often tell which designers have not only mastered the fundamentals of design but the tools used to create the work as well. N Design Studio and Veerle are two excellent examples of this. In the case of N Design Studio, Nick La clearly has a great sense of design. His work is balanced, the typography is well crafted, and the color scheme communicates a specific message. However he is able to take the design to a whole new level by some of the advanced as well as stunning techniques he has learned.

If you take a look at Avalon Star you will notice the same trend. Again the designer has a clear mastery of design fundamentals. So much so that the site would be very well designed even with out the level of detail put into it. However he is able to create a truly memorable, high impact design through his understanding of photoshop.

So what am I saying?

If you have time it is worth while to practice your photoshop/illustrator skills as often as you can. With so many great tutorial sites available, there are always new techniques and methods to learn. Below is a list of the ones I follow,

• PSDTuts
• VectorTuts
• Smashing Magazine
• Verlee
• Web Designer Wall

What sites do you follow for tutorials?

YOUR DESIGN MAY BE BEAUTIFUL, BUT IT MIGHT STILL SUCK…

I want to preface this post by first saying that I believe one of the great strengths of our industry is that we have people from such diverse backgrounds. The evolution of the personal computer and the sophistication of design programs like Photoshop have created a low barrier to entry in the development of graphics. This means that even people who have very little experience, knowledge or skill can make some pretty nice look imagery.

It probably sounds like I am framing this in a negative light, but that is not my intent. I actually do see this as a huge strength for our industry. In any field or skill you are going to have newcomers and veterans. Having rewarding early experiences will results in a higher likelihood of sticking with the industry, which results in a greater number of skilled experts. This higher level of experts then leads to a more mature industry and a greater mind pool to help advance and improve everyones work.

That Being Said, There Are Drawbacks

Because the web is so new and fast paced, there are not a lot of great educational programs for design and how it relates to the web. Additionally many designers are self taught, so even if there was a great program they might not get the insights of experienced instructors. Now again, this is not necessarily a bad thing… I will be the first to admit that I do not have a formal education in design and there are a lot of other amazing designers in the same boat.

The major problem I see is that as an industry we are really good at focusing on some things but completely miss the boat on others. This means that those self teaching become very adapt at the “popular” news and information and many educational programs are shaped around these as well. Critically important aspects of design receive very little attention.

What We Are Good At…

There was a time when we were really good at talking about the better ways to “build” a website. You should use web standards, make it accessible and ensure that is usable (OK somewhat design related). As these topics become more common new “sexier” news become popular.

Where we once talked about the importance of accessibility, standards and the like we now are now pumping out tutorials and lists. Tutorials cover how to make fancy graphics, how to do the next cool jQuery trick or integrate a fun WordPress plugin. Lists of “cool styles of design” seem to sprout up every week and are shared around the web at lightening speed.

What We Are Not Good At…

I am always shocked at how little attention is given towards communicating the right message. There are tons of tutorials out there that talk about how to make “such and such” style of design and lists of “such and such” amazing designs. However there rarely is talk about when to use such a style. The web is such a highly visual medium and I think this leads to it. It is easy to overlook the context and the message when you are scanning through sites purely to see what looks good to you.

So we end up forgetting that users make very brash assumptions about our sites based on our graphics. Those assumptions can increase or decrease sales, brand value and the effectiveness of the site.

Design Can Communicate As Much as Words

Every piece of design on your site communicates something. As a whole the design can communicate more than the words you chose to place on your site (especially considering some users do very little reading). If you are communicating the wrong message it doesn’t matter how beautiful your design is, it still sucks (harsh but true!).

I would even go so far as to say that a design that communicates the right message but is not so visually pleasing will ultimately be more effective than a beautiful design that is completely off message.

So How Do You Know if it is On Message?

Determining how “on message” a design is can be tricky for a few reasons…

1. As the designer we are often too close to the design
2. We are also rarely the target market of the design
3. Design is subjective
4. The client (who ultimately gives approval) suffers from the same issues

However there is a great way to find out. We have usability testing and we should have design testing as well. It is much easier and less expensive than usability testing and can have a huge impact. The process is very familiar to usability testing as well:

1. Identify your target market so you can get qualified test subjects
2. Develop a list of specific questions
3. Develop a set of instructions to get the highest quality feedback
4. Perform the tests, record the results

Crafting the Questions

Obviously getting people with in your target market that will be using the design is a critical step. However the quality of the questions and instructions is equally important. Because people are so opinionated about visuals and design there will always be a tendency to just starting freeform talking about what they like or dislike about the design. However this is not helpful, what you want to know is what the design communicates to them.

I find that it is best to identify what you want the design to communicate then craft very specific yes or no questions around it. Sometimes you can get away with short answer questions as well, but the more freedom you give the further out your answers will be.

For example if you want the message to be “Child friendly restaurant with classic american food” you could develop a whole series of questions around it, such as:

• Would you expect to see this design used for a grocery store?
• Does this design feel like it is targeted at adults?
• What sort of food would you expect to find here?

Now the first few questions might have thrown you off, but a high quality question shouldn’t lead the test subject. You wouldn’t want them to think “Oh they said restaurant so of course it must be a restaurant.” By asking a question that you WANT them to answer false too you will really know if the design clearly communicates your message.

Something is Better than Nothing

Simply being more aware of the design message and crafting the right design, but I really do encourage you to take it a step further and do some testing just to see what reactions you get. I bet you will be surprised. Furthermore it will make you a much stronger designer as well.

OBJECTIVE DRIVEN DESIGN (ODD)

If you define design as “to devise for a specific function or end,” it’s hard to imagine designing with out intended outcome at the forefront of your mind. Yet at some point in our careers we have committed this sin. Whether it’s making decisions based on aesthetics, including “popular” website elements (I’m looking at you social media buttons) or focusing on what the stake-holders want over the users — we have made design decisions that fail to consider what the design hopes to achieve.

With so many things to focus on — style to structure and everything in between — I can’t blame anyone for having difficulty seeing the forest from the trees. But it’s no excuse. This is our profession, our trade, our craft. I don’t expect anyone to be perfect (and I certainly am not) but we should strive to create the best work possible.

But best is hard to quantify and even more difficult to qualify. How do you know if one design is better than another? Clearly tastes differ and chances are your aesthetic preference won’t match the users. At the risk of oversimplification, the answer is objectives. If you can define what the design is supposed to achieve in a measurable way you can (duh) measure its performance. This is the heart of objective drive design, let’s explore further.

Objective Driven Design Defined

Easy to understand yet hard to master, objective drive design is simply the act of consciously making design decisions based on the objectives of your stake holders and users. In short, what do the people paying you want to achieve? and what do the users want to achieve? This simple question (or more often, questions) should dictate every pixel placed on the screen.

Most design discussions I have been privy to explore objectives in one form or another, but alas exploration is not enough. ODD (objective driven design) isn’t that easy. Too often the answers to objective questions influence the end design but fail to dictate it — and there is an insurmountable difference. Let’s discuss what happens when take the former approach.

Objectives Influencing Design

Picture this common scenario. Your goal is to generate leads and users coming to the site want to find out pricing, service offerings and get some idea the quality of company X’s work. I would venture this loosely describes over 50% of the B2B service websites on the web.

With such a common design problem it’s not surprising most of the premium themes designed for this audience share a common set of characteristics. Below are the top three WordPress themes on ThemeForest.

What you will notice is all of these themes have a common set of elements. Typically news, a slider, their unique positioning statement, calls to action, massive amounts of social media links, blog listings, tweets, service offerings and previous work. Now there may be justification for some of these common elements, but certainly not all of them. There in lies the problem.

These themes were influenced by objectives but they aren’t objective driven. In all fairness, it would be near impossible to design a mass market theme in a “pure” ODD manner, but I digress. If you consider the primary goal of generating leads with users who’re looking for pricing, services and quality indicators then half the elements on the page are unnecessary. A carousel, while “cool” does little to help the users out. You could argue they are communication device, but I would counter that it’s hardly the most effective approach (well described here.) News? Typically news sections are a place for companies to brag about things users don’t care about.

In the end the design is probably not ineffective but it’s also not extremely effective either. Even a handful of unnecessary elements have a profound impact on a design. Those well versed in psychology know that adding decision points and expanding options create unnecessary cognitive load. Even simple decisions are a seven step process and take energy to perform. Thus every additional element on the page requires a decision to observe or ignore. Even after that decision you still have to process, comprehend and commit the stimuli to working memory. All together the task of browsing unfocused websites leads to ego depletion, leaving the user tired and strained… not the experience you want to be cultivating and certainly not the best way to generate conversions.

Let’s see how this differs with ODD.

Objective Driven Design (ODD)

I subscribe to the thought that users inherently want to convert. They have a task in mind, they’re interested in your product or service and if enticed will purchase, fill out your contact form… or whatever. Your job is to reduce the friction required to convert. This primarily achieved by eliminating slow downs and facilitate information retrieval. By preventing the user from having to think too hard and making it easy to find desired information you maximize the possibility of conversion. The best way of doing this is through the elimination everything which is not absolutely necessary.

If users are uninterested in your news feed, recent accomplishments or other self promotional content they will ignore it. It doesn’t mater that YOU want them to see it. See my post on selective disregard if you are interested in the reasoning. Instead of learning about the companies accomplishments you deplete their willpower by requiring unnecessary effort to ignore it in lieu of what they DO care about.

With ODD everything on the page supports the primary objectives (for both users and stakeholders.) Any element that doesn’t tie to the objectives is removed. Pure ODD is ruthless, even partially relevant elements are slashed and burned.

An Example of ODD

Not surprisingly well designed landing pages are great examples of ODD. Even though you can’t realistically design an entire website like a landing page you can still learn from them.

If we take a look at the DevAuditions landing page we can see that despite a large number of elements on the page each one is necessary to convert users. The design begins by introducing the user to the product with the USP and some supporting material. It follows up by outlining three key features, illustrated by the image to the right (giving the user an idea of what type of service this is.)

It then has the first call to action for those who are already sold. Those who aren’t get a detailed description of how it works, followed by some more detailed copy and credibility boosting client logos. This is topped off by some final teasers and another (stronger) call to action.

Notice how there is nothing superfluous? Notice how all the content on the page is also tailored towards the users questions? You can see with in each section they are answering common questions, stopping points, etc…

What to Take Away

I could (and probably will) discuss ODD at great length, but this is not my intention for this post. The truth is ODD is nothing new. Some of you reading this have been doing it your whole career, only under a different name. The Aeronautics industry practically invented it, although they call it “Value-Driven Design.”

My hope is that I have planted a seed, one that you will consider even if in passing. Then, maybe, the next time you design that seedling will remind you to consider what you are doing just a slight bit more and maybe… just maybe you will decide to do something different as a result.

DESIGN IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS

Growing up I had many hobbies that I was passionate about. From computer to cars, fine arts to film, I always thirsted for information and relished learning more. This of course was before the internet had gained popularity leaving me fewer options to find the knowledge I hunted. Having to “hunt” for knowledge feels like a bad dream in todays river of publications and publishers. There isn’t a day that goes by with out articles about design being published. In all honestly I do love this free flow of content that the internet mediates so well, but nothing is with out its trade offs.

It is easy to be excited and passionate by design. Our culture is motivated and stimulated by our senses and predominately our visual sense. Everyone in the world has preferences, tastes and passions when it comes to things that they see. Even the most curmudgeon of people would be delighted to see a sunset over the mountains or a natural waterfall.

Design, especially on the web often taps into this visual pleasure part of our brain. It is the pleasure that we get out of seeing something that fits our tastes that makes it easy to scan through design galleries daily, read the next article about typography and spend hours looking through color pallets for that right combination (not that I do any of those… really I don’t…) By and large this should be recognized and embraced. After all when designing a website you should strive to get that reaction by those that are looking at your work.

This is of course tricky because design is subjective. But I would stress that it is more than just being “subjective,” rather different for every group and every person living. Further the “visual excitement” one gets from looking at the design is only a fraction of what is really important. How the site functions and achieves goals and objectives is much more important than how it looks. While I won’t be so crass to say that the visuals are not a factor or that they are inconsequential, they are a piece of a much bigger puzzle.

A site that has a look and feel that resonates with target users will perform better in most cases. Additionally users perceive a good-looking site to be easier to use even if this is not the case. Aesthetics can build engagement, increase retention and encourage use… but I often ask “Do we put too much emphasis on them?”

I have long thought about this and I am fully aware I too can have clouded judgement based on my own personal preferences. It wasn’t until I came across the rash of “Best of Design 2010” style articles earlier this year that I really become frustrated with the “fast food” style design articles that have become so popular. Reviewing the sites and designs that these posts showcased I fully agree they are beautiful, from a web designers artistic perspective. But what qualifies them as the “Best Design of 2010″ from a “performs the function and achieves the goals they were designed for” perspective? How do we know the target audience loved the visuals instead of just web designers as a group?

This illustrates a perpetual miscommunication about what “good design” really is. Our community rewards, showcases and promotes work based on our groups visual preferences and tastes. While not all designers fall prey to peer pressure and attempt to design for the styles that are showcased a lot of them do under the assumption that it constitutes as good design. In reality it would only constitute as good aesthetic design if you were designing for other web designers and even then one would be failing to consider the more important issue of  “Is it going to achieve the goals you have set?”

Rather than treating our work like art we should instead look to the advertising industry, who have a much greater sense of results and success as a measure of great campaigns. Ad agencies expect that they will be critiqued on results in addition to the craftsmanship of their work, why should we be any different?

I encourage you to reevaluate how you look at design and how you are influenced by it. If you are someone who does design on any level you are going to be effected by what you see and is around you. If your mindset is that of thinking about solutions to specific situations and problems rather than what creates a pleasurable reaction when you personally see it you are going to be much closer to producing design that does create results. Maybe you won’t get the fan fare that designing for the CSS Galleries would, but since when are they your clientele anyways?

DESIGNERS ARE SCIENTISTS, NOT ARTISTS

DESIGNERS ARE SCIENTISTS, NOT ARTISTS

I run across references of design as art on almost a daily basis. Somewhere down the road, design changed from a predictable approach of creating desired outcomes into an intangible magic trick. More specifically, design became categorized as an art form rather than a science. This isn’t the case however, in fact, web design is closer to engineering than it is artistic expression. Much like an engineer, your design must take into consideration the functionality and technical requirements of the project. For example, ever decision must be considered in the context of reliability, maintainability, page speed, accessibility, platform, etc…

The rebirth of user experience should be proof enough that the websites we create should be shaped by those that use them. Therefor the qualify of a design is directly related to the empathy and understanding the designer has for the user, which can only be achieved through proper research. In this context, design is actually a practice of anthropology, yet another science. I often ask myself, where did this misconception come from? and until recently it puzzled me how the aesthetics of design fit into the “designer scientist” concept. My theory is as follows…

“Artist Designer Myth” Was Born…

From what I gather, the print and advertising industry has primed the way for the “design is art” complex. Early day graphic designers created images using fine art methods, including ink, pencil and paint. You can hardly blame agencies for labeling the designers as “the art department.” Origins aside, the label not only stuck, it spread. Design concepts are classified as “artwork” and I am sure you have heard the title “art director.”

Describing design as art makes little sense for print work and even less for the web. Yet it seems to have transferred over to the new medium. I attribute this to the misconception that web design is an evolution of traditional graphic design. This is in no way the case. Print is a self-evident, one way medium. You interpret what is in front of you and that is about the extent of it. The web is an interactive medium. You use a website to get things done, for enjoyment and for communication. The world would never have become depend on the web if it was just a form of online paper.

How It Affects Designers

The more I read about the subconscious mind and what Malcom Gladwell calls “thin-slicing,” the more apparent it becomes that referring to your work as “art” will, over time, alter your perception of what you are doing. So if you thought of design as a predictable process originally, simply referring to your work and title using the term “art” will subconsciously shift your perceptions towards visual expression.

It sounds harmless, but you are really giving up control of your work. You are essentially attributing the quality of your work to an indescribable skill. That skill may lead you to a great design sometimes, but not others… and ultimately you are at “it’s” mercy. I hope this sounds ludicrous, but suspect many designers operate under this false idea.

The Science of Design

My theory is that design is equal parts anthropology and cognitive science, or the study of people’s behavior and thought. What do you think is going to be more effective, an interface based on an understanding of how people think or one that was based on what looked good to the designer? Obviously the former.

Usability experts have been long aware of cognitive science as a way to predict users thought processes in order to make using something as easy as possible. In this context, cognitive science is used to improve learnability, comprehension and memory. If you understand how people learn, process information and store / organize it then optimizing those qualities becomes a repeatable process (just with different variables).

Few people dispute the importance of psychology when it comes to usability and who would with a title such as “Human Computer Interaction (HCI)?” But aesthetic design is still seen as an art performed by artists. Sites like “The Contrast Rebellion” demonstrate that designers carry a stigma of thoughtless pixel pushers who focus on nothing by visual pleasure. Until recently, I wasn’t sure why aesthetic design was more than art… I just knew.

The Science of Aesthetics

With all the talk about art and subjectivity it is no surprise that design is thought of the way it is. Don’t be fooled, there are scientific reasons we like (or dislike) what we see. While not always easy to predict, much of beauty is a combination of ancient survival mechanisms and human reflection. Meaning, our species evolved into the sophisticated beings we are today because of our ability to avoid danger and gravitate towards opportunity. With out getting into too much detail, designs that include danger signals are considered undesirable. Inversely, designs that communicate safety signals (or opportunity, such as food or shelter) are attractive.

Sound crazy? Consider this example, a very cluttered design mimics an environment that is hard to navigate through and spot potential predators. Walking through a dense forest requires a lot more awareness for danger than an open meadow. Is it a surprise that people gravitate towards open, clean and well-organized designs and avoid cluttered and overwhelming ones?

Much of our behavior still happens on a subconscious level, which is one of the reasons it is so hard to describe why some designs are attractive and others are not. Author Don Normand sites that people will often justify their reactions consciously even when the reaction comes from a subconscious level.

I am not suggesting that conscious thought doesn’t influence your design taste, just less than you may think. Life experiences, culture, gender, personal preferences do shape what design you are drawn too on a conscious level. While more difficult, if you know your users well you can predict their response to specific imagery. By studying the target users (anthropology) and understanding how they think (psychology) you can intentionally use visuals to create specific reactions. In what way does this description sound like art?

Summary: Intention and Purpose

One could argue that there is a science to art as well. You place objects on a page according to rules of visual balance, select colors based on sound principles and use shapes to create specific responses. The difference, in my opinion, lies in purpose and intention. When you design, you are really creating tools. What you make has utility to it, whether it be providing information about a company or the ability to interface with an online product.

Art on the other hand, is a form of emotional expression. The artist who creates the work does so out of self-expression and the purchaser (or appreciator) of the art does so for emotional reasons as well. While it is safe to say all behavior has an emotional component to it, design has a different purpose than art, one that lends itself to creating predictable outcomes for specific people. With artwork, it only matters that some people enjoy it rather than specific people.

THEORY of Printing & Prepress Basics

Printing & Prepress Basics

While art and design schools do an impressive job of teaching the importance of form, function, and how to use flashy Photoshop techniques, it's rare that designers have been taught the skills necessary to pass off their projects to printers so that they may not only successfully, but smoothly, produce a designed work.

In this article, I'll discuss the basics when it comes to translating your brilliant ideas (and surely hours of your precious time and energy) into successfully printed projects with a printer, making it easier to keep your deadlines and maintain a blissfully happy and healthy relationship with your vendor.

This Post is Day 3 of our Graphic Design Session. Creative Sessions

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Four-Color Process Printing

While other printing processes like letterpress or screen printing are great options for producing your work, this article will discuss offset lithography printing specifically, which is the more standard means of producing most any printed work in mass quantities.

Offset lithography is a process that uses a combination of four process colors, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, generally noted as CMYK, to produce full-color images. Spot colors, standardized by the Pantone Matching System®, are also available in offset printing, but know that when creating your documents, you need to be sure of two basic image guidelines.

Get the Mode Right

First, always make sure that each and every photo or image you include (both raster and vector) are in CMYK format and not RGB. While RBG offers a greater color range and works well in designing for implementation online, it doesn't cut it when going to press. Any images that you leave in RGB mode will have to be translated into CMYK by your prepress operator before going to print. This not only takes more time for a prepress technician, but leaves you unsure as to how your color will turn out once on press.

Image Quality

It shouldn't have to be said, but 72 dpi (dots per inch) will not produce a quality image on press like it will online. Surprisingly, this is a consistent issue prepress operators face in handling images. Always be sure that each of your images is set to at least 300 dpi before sending them to your printer, or you'll be sadly disappointed when a gorgeous photo you spent hours editing turns out blurry and pixelated once it's in your hands.

One of These Blacks is Not Like the Other

Interestingly enough, there are actually several different types of black when it comes to printing, but the two most widely used terms are "plain black" and "rich" or "full black." Keep in mind, "rich black" has several variants, depending on your printer's preference. If you've ever created an image in Illustrator that contained sections of black, and later placed it into a Photoshop document where the image sat on top of a black you chose from the color palette in Photoshop, it's likely you've seen this disconnect.

Plain Black

When you use black in a program like Illustrator or InDesign without choosing a Pantone color, the CMYK breakdown automatically defaults to C=0 M=0 Y=0 K=100, where black is fully saturated and the other three are completely absent.

Rich Black / Full Black

As stated before, there are several variants of rich black, but what's important to know when you're designing is that the Photoshop default for black is different than other programs (where C: 75, M: 68, Y: 67, K: 90). It's likely that Photoshop will be the place you find this difference most often if you're not intentionally trying to give a piece of your design a darker, richer tone than you get with plain black.

If you are intentionally doing so, make sure to ask your printer which variant of rich black they like to use on press, usually referred to as "warm black" or "cool black," where there are higher levels of either magenta or cyan, respectively. It's generally not recommended that you use a completely saturated level of all four colors (where C: 100, M: 100, Y: 100, K:100), as this can over-saturate the paper on press and will certainly give the press operator trouble.

Why It Matters

Other than over-saturating your paper on press or creating a document that has visibly different tones of black than you were expecting, the main headache caused by choosing the wrong black happens in terms of setting type.

As previously mentioned, both Illustrator and InDesign default to plain black, where it's more often recommended you do your type setting for documents anyway. If, however, something happens where you've accidentally set especially large amounts of type in any variant of rich black, you might notice a problem in your final printed piece. If your press operator runs your job and doesn't perfectly match up each separation of CMYK by precisely lining up the document's registration marks, or if the paper shifts at all while moving through the rollers on press, you'll likely see ghosting of one or all of C, M, or Y falling outside of the characters in your type, making it not nearly as sharp as expected. Your printer might end up doing it well regardless, but it also might take them more time, paper, and energy to print it correctly.

Prepress Preparation

Bleed

If you'd like any/all of your image(s) to run completely to the edges of your final printed piece, you'll have to include what's referred to as bleed on all edges of your documents. The bleed area is simply excess image that won't end up in your final piece, but will run on press and will later be trimmed off. Because paper is likely to shift slightly while running through the press, leaving excess image area is crucial.

To avoid this problem, always ask your vendor how much bleed they prefer to be included and make sure to design your documents to spec from onset, knowing the excess portion of your piece will eventually be cut off. Typically, bleed area only needs to be somewhere between 1/8" to 1/4".

Trim Marks

Trim marks are simply small lines placed outside of your image so that the printer knows where to cut once everything is printed. Even if you don't place these on your documents yourself, simply telling your vendor the finished size of your piece(s) will help them to know where to cut.

Registration Marks and Color Bars

Registration marks and color bars both sit outside of the trim area of your document and are used as guides for the press operator. During printing, several things need to be kept in check, and registration marks and color bars help to do so. Registration marks are sets of crosshairs, typically placed on all four edges of the sheet your document will print on, used by the press operator in order to ensure they're lining up each plate of color for your job correctly. Color bars are a set of squares, each containing a different density of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, indicating an increase in dot gain (the increase in size of the halftone dots that make up an image), and ink density, and are used to control contrast.

While many programs have settings that allow you to create registration marks and color bars for your document, it's unlikely that your vendor will use them as-is. One of the primary jobs of a prepress operator is to take your original file and set it up multiple times on a sheet, fitting as many as possible on the size of paper your job will run on, in an effort to be as cost efficient as possible. Once they've done so, they then add registration marks and color bars, as well as trim marks, to that sheet. It's likely that any registration marks or color bars you've placed on your document will be removed and recreated by your prepress operator before going to print.

Trapping

While only older presses or some less experienced press operators might need you to include what's referred to as "trapping" with your documents, it's still smart to ask your vendor whether or not they require it. It might also be beneficial for you to know why it's necessary in some cases.

Trapping draws from the same theory as overprinting, where one color lays over another to ensure no gaps are created between colors in the event that anything shifts on press. By including trap, done by slightly increasing the size of one color so that it lays over another color, you account for any of these problems on press. This way, if the paper shifts or stretches, or registration isn't hitting exactly where it should be, there won't be a noticeable gap in between your colors. If your printer does require trapping, be sure to ask which settings they generally prefer and how to include it in your files, depending on which program you're using.

Getting Fonts Right

Don't Bold or Italicize Fonts From the Style Menu

In any standard layout program, there's a font bar where all of the options for choosing a font and it's characteristics can be found. Included in this bar is usually a drop down menu for selecting your font name, along with other attributes, such as leading and kerning, font weight, and paragraph alignment. Some of these programs, like Quark, include drop down menus that allow you to apply characteristics like "bold" or "italic" even when the font you've chosen doesn't include those particular styles.

For instance, if you have the Tahoma font family installed on your system, which happens to include only Tahoma Regular and Tahoma Bold, this extra drop down menu might allow to you to turn it into an italicized font. Even though this is tempting, don't ever do this when creating a document to send to print. When your printer receives the file and sends it to press, the font will be replaced by a font that is in its system and remove the italic attribute (or any other that you've applied arbitrarily). Therefore, always remember to choose a specific font that already has the attributes you're looking to apply included in the actual font family.

Prep Them...All of Them

When you've finished creating your design, you'll want to do a couple things with your fonts in order to send them you your printer correctly.

Packaging

Typically, printers ask that you package a copy of all of the original font files contained in the documents you're printing along with all of your other files, so that in the event something goes wrong with one or more of your fonts. This way, when they open your documents, they're able to install the fonts on their own system in hopes of correcting the problem.

Outlining

In addition, they'll ask that you do what's referred to as "outlining" your fonts. In essence, this turns the characters of each font into paths rather than actual type, almost like you had drawn a shape in Illustrator, rather than typed text with the Type tool. This way, when a file is opened, the software program isn't trying to call up a font, because it's only recognizing a shape, and the issue of missing fonts or replacing is completely avoided.

As a note, this cannot be done in Photoshop. There are more detailed reasons why (mostly to do with the difference between rasters and vectors), but know that you should always flatten Photoshop files so your printer can see what the final image should like like, and send over a layered file along with any fonts you used in creating it, as well. This way, if a printer needs to work with your layered file for any reason, they're able to do so, and they have the ability to temporarily install your fonts while working with your file without the fear of one being automatically replaced in the process.

However, it is recommended that, even if you're laying text into a Photoshop file for printing, that you first create it in Illustrator and then drop it into Photoshop after doing so. It might take more time and can be a bit cumbersome having to go back and forth between programs, but the quality of the type will be phenomenally better than that of typing any text in Photoshop.

Keeping in Communication

Although these might be the basics, they're also the problems that prepress operators most often face when preparing files for printing. The best way to avoid running into any issues with your printer is to always ask your vendor details in advance. Each vendor will have their own set of preferences when it comes to preparing your files and it's best to ask before you even being creating your documents, if possible. If you ever have any questions at any point in the process, always know that you can ask.